Twitter

[Gavster]

Musk laid off 3,700
Zuck has laid off 11,000

Looks like social media tech companies have peaked.

[Gavster]

It’s inevitable that the excessive pay, benefits and bean bags which have typified tech companies will, at some point, come to an end.

[Jobbo]

Some of the fake ones are superb

I hope someone collates them - it's fun finding them randomly but it would be great to see an archive for posterity after Musk inevitably deletes them all.

[Beany]

I love that this fail fast agile car crash is playing out in real life to people that would never normally see it.

A comedy lack of programme/project mgt, testing and change control process.

In small outfits with uncomplicated systems it doesn't produce results that many see or feel.

However you get to the behmoth that is the Twitter and changing something that looks small without checking dependencies and fully testing it you get this kind of result.

This could also be a result of a lack of design docs (I've seen this happen too) too so the people coding these changes have no idea of how it all hangs together.

There's a fair chance that quite a lot of 'litlte tricks' that individually are unimportant, but collectively control large chunks of the infrastructure, live in the heads of some of the staff currently on garden leave.

Also, 'move fast and break things' is what you do in your dev instances where no-one will see it, not on live....

[nuttinnew]

[ZedLeg]

It’s inevitable that the excessive pay, benefits and bean bags which have typified tech companies will, at some point, come to an end.

It's not even like this is the first time this has happened. I look forward to the Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 bubbles collapsing at the same time

[drcarlos]

Also, 'move fast and break things' is what you do in your dev instances where no-one will see it, not on live....

In the world of us sensible infra peeps yes, code devs are quite often not of this mindset.

At a smallscale outfit you can get away with it but I see more of it creeping in now in larger orgs, especially for internal tools. It's just in this case it hugely visible and customer facing.

[Beany]

A nice thread with some of the highlights. And Musk 'crying with laughter emoji x 2' at one of what I suspect would be the larger ad clients (ninetendo) being spoofed on the platform he owns, with the changes he implemented.

[Simon]

Read this and the linked thread from Riana. Musk is gonna kill Twitter.

[Rich B]

Blimey, thats an interesting read!

[Beany]

Here's another one - Musks letter to all staff saying 'remote working ends as of now' (sent at 0239hrs....)

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-mu ... ?r=US&IR=T

Sorry that this is my first email to the whole company, but there is no way to sugarcoat the message.

Frankly, the economic picture ahead is dire, especially for a company like ours that is so dependent on advertising in a challenging economic climate. Moreover, 70% of our advertising is brand, rather than specific performance, which makes us doubly vulnerable!

That is why the priority over the past ten days has been to develop and launch Twitter Blue Verified subscriptions (huge props to the team!). Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn. We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.

Of course, we will still then be significantly reliant on advertising, so I am spending time with our sales & partnerships teams to ensure that Twitter continues to be appealing to advertisers. This is the Spaces discussion that Robin, Yoel and I hosted today:

[Links to a Twitter Spaces recording called "Elon Q&A: Advertising & the Future."]

The road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed. We are also changing Twitter policy such that remote work is no longer allowed, unless you have a specific exception. Managers will send the exceptions lists to me for review an approval.

Starting tomorrow (Thursday), everyone is required to be in the office for a minimum of 40 hours per week. Obviously, if you are physically unable to travel to an office or have a critical personal obligation, then your absence is understandable.

I look forward to working with you to take Twitter to a whole new level. The potential is truly incredible!

Thanks,
Elon

So that's....only slightly psychotic.

[tim]

I recommend watching The Elon Musk Show on iPlayer.

There's a lot of folks throwing around vague unverified information as fact and the inevitable pile-ons, but what a time to be alive on Twitter!

[tim]

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/234 ... ng-q-and-a

Read the full transcript, it's very interesting I think.

[Gavster]

He’s already made Twitter more popular than ever before

[ZedLeg]

Rubberneckers watching the end.

It must just be Elon and some interns keeping the lights on at this point.

[Gavster]

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/234 ... ng-q-and-a

Read the full transcript, it's very interesting I think.

That is very interesting, I like the way he works.

It's quite incredible that Elon is getting so much hate. He has taken over from a board/staff of people who had taken Twitter to a place where it is facing $1bn+ in annual losses at the beginning of a recession. He took over from a massive bunch of failures. Yet, people still seem to think Elon is the bad guy, rather than the massively bloated, overstaffed, underperforming group of people that built a failing company.

[Gavster]

I recommend watching The Elon Musk Show on iPlayer.

Thanks, will check it out

[ZedLeg]

There are no good guys here, in the battle between social media execs and Musk everyone sucks.

[tim]

I largely think the hate is because these same people wouldn't have the balls to do what he does publically with companies like this. I find it and him really fascinating.

Am also amused/bemused the hate has already started on those with Blue subs. I'd like to see an option to remove the tick, but keep the additional feature set.

[dinny_g]

Just so I'm clear - he spent $44 billion Dollars on a company who economic picture is, frankly, dire ...